Tuesday, April 2, 2013

CSMU’s de-recognition racially motivated?

A group of disgruntled doctors claim that the de-recognition of the Crimea State Medical University by the Malaysian Medical Council in 2005 is racially motivated.

PETALING JAYA: A group of doctors have taken Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai to task for defending the Malaysian Medical Council which has re-enforced its decision to de-recognise the Crimea State Medical University (CSMU) in Ukraine.

They want Liow, who is also MCA deputy president, to reveal the list of violations committed by CSMU which warranted the de-recognition from the MMC.

Spokesman for the group, Muhammad Nasir Abdul Aziz, claimed that the de-recognition of CSMU was not done professionally but instead was racially motivated.

“For example, the Malaysian Medical Act clearly indicates that three MMC council members must visit the said university for recognition. But when MMC inspected CSMU, only two members were present when they re-visited the university in October last year.

“Since the mandatory quorum was not met, the panel’s report becomes invalid,” he told FMT.
He said the inclusion of MMC secretary Dr Wan Maslan Mohamed Woojdy and another officer in the inspection panel could not be taken into account as they were not MMC members.
He also listed other important measures not followed by the MMC in de-recognising CSMU. They are:

council members must prepare a report;

the report must be forwarded to the president/director-general of the MMC;

the president must peruse the report and if he agrees, he must endorse it;

the report then goes to the minister who, under Section 8 of the Medical Act, is empowered to either except or reject the report (historically MMC rejected the recognition of UKM medical agree in 1970s but the prime minister and minister intervened); and

if the minister accepts or rejects it, it then goes to his parliamentary secretary and is then forwarded to the Attorney-General’s Chambers to be either included or excluded from the second schedule of the Medical Act 1971 where it will either be included or excluded as a recognised medical school.

On Saturday, Liow dismissed allegations that the decision to de-recognise CSMU by MMC is racially and politically motivated.

He said doctors who graduated from CSMU after 2005 would be required to sit a local examination to practise medicine in Malaysia.

He said this after a group of doctors threatened to campaign against him in the Bentong parliamentary constituency in the coming general election.

Liow is the Bentong MP and is likely to defend the seat in the upcoming polls.

Favouritism at work
The doctors have argued that the main reason behind the de-recognition was because CSMU was mostly patronised by Indians. To date, there are about 1,000 Indian and about 500 Malay doctors who had graduated from CSMU.

Muhammad drew a comparison with another local medical school which obtained MMC’s green light to conduct offshore medical programmes with three universities in the Ukraine.

“They were recognised after a visit of only one MMC member. The other two who went with him on the trip were the secretary and an officer.

“The MMC panel member is this particular local university’s ‘government liaison officer’. It is clear that the recognition process was flawed and biased due to personal interest,” claimed Muhammad.

This local university charges a whooping RM200,000 for its degree, just by being an intermediary, he claimed.

Muhammad also said the recent recognition of two other universities in Shanghai, China, was also dubious as the MMC president did not issue appointment letters to council members to conduct an inspection at the universities.

“It is a known fact that MMC did not have a president in December and the acting president cannot endorse the visit. Thus, the visit is illegal and panel report invalid,” he said.

Former MMC president Dr Hasan Abdul Rahman was caught for khalwat on Nov 15, and was suspended on Nov 26 till a decision to demote him was taken on Dec 3.

“So, there is no way he could have signed for the Shanghai visit when the visit was in December,” said Muhammad.

He said the two cases above proves that MMC practised favouritism in recognising universities and that the de-cognition of CSMU was racially and politically motivated.

Muhammad said MMC had recognised the Medical University of Vienna (Austria) and until now there was not even a single Malaysian student, studying there.

Meanwhile, he said the campaign against Liow and MIC leaders, who have turned a blind eye to this issue, would kick off this week.

“We have already printed 50,000 pamphlets in Malay and English,” he said, adding that it will also be printed in Chinese and Tamil.

He added that the printed pamphlets will be distributed in Bentong, Segamat and Cameron Highlands before focusing on the other MIC candidate constituencies.

MIC president G Palanivel and his deputy Dr S Subramaniam are expected to be fielded in Cameron Highlands and Segamat respectively.

Muhammad said apart from CSMU graduates, the Malay and Chinese doctors would also participate in the campaign.